Saturday, March 31, 2007

Danke, Herr Orff

In German the word is "ohrworm," and how appropriate for music by Carl Orff. We've been performing Carmina Burana all week for the Ballet, and I can't seem to get it out of my head during non-performing hours.

The other day I was in the bathroom at work, just one stall and one urinal. Enjoying a brief solitary moment without coworkers, I began humming whatever part was stuck in my head at the time. The humming turned into quiet singing as I washed my hands.

"Swaz hie gat umbe, daz sint allez megede..."

I grabbed a paper towel to dry my hands and looked over at the stall.

"Die wellent anman..."

To my horror, I saw two shoes at the toilet peaking out beneath the partition. I recognized the shoes as someone who works down the hall from our office.

I promptly stopped singing, threw the towel away and left the bathroom...smiling.

"Alle disen sumer gan!"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was that German you were trying to write? I really couldn't really understand it. If it was, you might want to look at the actual spelling of the text...

laeltaylor said...

Gute Frage, Anon. Carmina Burana is a collection of 1000 poems and songs written in the early 13th century. Carl Orff set 24 of them to music in a work called the same, Carmina Burana. The text is mostly Latin, with a few in a dialect of Middle High German and some Old French. Some of them are macaronic, a mixture of the languages. What I’ve quoted is actually correct - it’s definitely not Hochdeutsch!

When we sing it, we pronounce the words in German-Latin, a slight variation from Latin that confuses the heck out of me when we have to sing something in true Latin. Ich komme durcheinander. If you ever get a chance to hear a performance of Carmina Burana, I highly recommend it.